Howls In A Hurricane

Three Poems For My Beloved

2012-02-15T09:14:00.001-05:00

Eros

You make the surprise of surroundings
tame, ordered, a subdued god resting
in the sheets between us,
his blessing like the gush of a river
only we can hear.
Your full breaths
drawn and blown, and now, both of us,
silent as twilight, the water flat and calm.

Your long, white arms form
two spans spread across an emptiness,
your hands holding the back of my head,
I look to the wreckage of your dress
collapsed on the floor, the vessel
that only minutes before held your form.

Even spent, you tempt me like a boat
on which we will take a cruise,
drink a bottle of wine, and eat.

When can I go aboard again?
When, again, may I eat?*

Love

Green eyes. Red hair.

Long thin leaves rose from the water,
bent to the wind.*
You and I in the same boat,
floating in the summer of our beginnings.

The sun shone down as we drank the beer.
We rested under the canopy til past noon,
broke the flat water with our bodies,
felt the seaweed hidden beneath the surface.
When the night came, I looked into flames,
I felt the tide of your pulse,
I saw the future.

Green eyes. Red hair.

Marriage

Aging, but still taking an occasional note,
the body of years getting fat and slack,
the days churning like water through
the turbine of a dam.
This life continues within the walls of our home,
smoke rolling up the chimney,
baskets of wine corks filling up as games come and go,
another horse race to be run,
and more games ahead,
letters arriving, bills being mailed.
With vodka and olive juice, whiskey, wine,
I understand how comprehensible the magic becomes,
how tuned to each other,
how the story rolls in a wave at a time,
and keeps rolling in
as our children hug us, and love us,
and begin to glimpse the half-fulfillment of words,
the importance of presence.
And the days, the days undertow away,
pulling our youth, and theirs, from us.
Lucky we are that love depends on habit
quite as much as the wild way of passion.
Gently does it, as the rain water in time
wears through the hardest stone,*
and the river it makes leads to a sea.

*these poems contain lines from other texts that kick-started their creation

A Cinema of All Art, All The Time

2011-06-06T22:37:00.007-04:00

A while back I purchased Rick Schmidt's book Extreme DV at Used Car Prices. I am intrigued by his aesethetic, which promotes a style of filmmaking that does not involve a script. This is counter-intuitve to me, and yet, alluring. Each of Schmidt's films have been completed in 10 days by a collaborative group that brainstorms for three hours before finding a seed of story and then spends the next five days growing it to its conclusion. Then they spend the last five days editing the film. In each case, no more than five hours of footage is shot for a 75-minute movie, which isn't much of a ratio. I don't know how good any of these films are, as they have screened in only a few festivals, and are not distributed anywhere. I am going to purchase a couple of them to see what kind of film results from Schmidt's method of creation, because the idea of taking off on the road for a couple of weeks with a camera, a sound recordist, and two actors seems really tempting to me.

Sprinkled throughout the text of ExtremeDV are excerpts from Ray Carney's "The Path of the Artist." Carney teaches film at Boston University, and it would be an understatement to say that he despises the Hollywood production model. For example, Carney writes: "To build your film around your main character's decisions and choices, plans and goals (as virtually every Hollywood movie does), is to skim the surface of life. Go deeper. To watch a Hollywood movie is to see ourselves as seen by ourselves--in other words, blinded in layer after layer of self-delusion. Real art is about seeing ourselves as others see us, leaving our own views behind to explore different ways of thinking and feeling."

Or: "Real art is not about yanking the viewer around, playing with expectations, showing how ingenious you are, but reverentailly exploring something you don't understand. It's the product of humility, not cockiness. Pulp Fiction, L.A. Confidential and the complete work of the Coen Brothers are to filmmaking what the Harlem Globetrotters are to basketball. If we had as hign an opinion of film as we do of sports, we wouldn't sit still for them."

Or: "We're only so used to this kind of film because most Hollywood directors are closer to being buisnessmen than artists. Schindler's List has more in common with Donald Trump's Art of the Deal than with Martin Buber's I and Thou. A producer's cinema reflects a producer's values. We need an artists' cinema that reflects an artist's vaules. Look at General della Rovere, To Sleep with Anger, or Wanda to see the alternative--the kind of film that hustlers like Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, and Spike Lee could never imagine making. The only reality that matters in Roberto Rossellini's, Charles Burnett's, and Barbara Loden's work is spiritual."

Carney is nothing if not bombastic, to the point of souding like a zealot, even, but I find some of his aphoristic thoughts refreshing. It is jarring to hear a critic refer to Spielberg or Tarantino as "hustlers," isn't it? He strikes me as an all-or-nothing type, all steak or all cake. Where I am comfortable with a world where a film can be art, just as a film can intend nothing more than the amusement of the viewer, he clearly is not. Carney writes that the "only reason these problem-solving, goal-driven, jigsaw-puzzle pictures are so popular is because they are so infantile. It takes no knowledge of life, no sensitivity to emotions to understand them."

He makes an argument that "people outside the movies don't have purposes and goals," that "we almost never know what we are doing or where we are going from one moment to the next" and encourages artists to "make a film that shows how irrelevant our plans are, how they are a way of avoiding living." This is probably where I fall off his bus, because I believe people have always looked to the structure of storytelling to find meaning in their lives. We tell ourselves stories where characters matter, and make choices, and wind-up fulfilled because that so frequently is not the reality of most lives. Is that willful acceptance of delusion? Perhaps, but who needs a cinema that would stand mostly to reinforce the fact that we are deluded, that we are mostly unimportant, that we will die without ever coming near self-actualization? Below is a list of films mentioned postively by Carney in the essay that is hyperthreaded above.

Film-Director

General della Rovere - Roberto Rossellini
To Sleep With Anger - Charles Burnett
Wanda - Barbara Loden
Tokyo Story - Yasujiro Ozu
Day of Wrath - Carl Dreyer
My Brilliant Career - Gillian Armstrong
Stalker - Andrei Tarkovsky
A Woman Under The Influence - John Cassavetes
The Sacrifice - Andrei Tarkovsky
The Scenic Route - Mark Rappaport
Love Streams - John Cassavetes
A Little Stiff - Caveh Zahedi
Gertrude - Carl Dreyer
Faces - John Cassavetes
The Wife - Tom Noonan
Grand Illusion - Jean Renoir
Breaking The Waves - Lars von Trier
The Celebration - Thomas Vinterberg
Stranger Than Paradise - Jim Jarmusch
It's A Wonderful Life - Frank Capra
Bleak Moments - Mike Leigh
Abigail's Party - Mike Leigh
Nuts In May - Mike Leigh
Home Sweet Home - Mike Leigh
Safe - Todd Haynes
Trash - Paul Morrissey
Sense of History - Mike Leigh
Killer of Sheep - Charles Burnett
Morgan's Cake - Rick Schmidt
Gummo - Harmony Korine
Jeanne Dielman - Chantal Akerman
Taste of Cherry - Abbas Kiarostami
Umberto D - Vittorio de Sica
The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice - Yasujiro Ozu
The Bicycle Thief - Vittorio de Sica
The Rules of the Game - Jean Renoir
Meantime - Mike Leigh
The Trial of Joan of Arc - Robert Bresson

I would venture a guess that the above list would make a good syllabus for an interesting film class, especially when the author of the essay from which that list was derived had the guts to write this: "Aristotle was wrong. The greatest art denies us the comfort of catharsis. Give your viewers an experience that doesn't allow them to recline into the easychair of an emotional release or clarification. Deny them easy answers. Force them to work out the ending themsleves. Force them to decide who was right and who was wrong--why tell them? Or give them an ending where the bad character triumphs and the good one fails."

I still don't know if an anti-Aristotelian cinema is one I would want to watch with any regularity, but perhaps I shall come away from this watching the films on this list with a changed perspective. Perhaps...perhaps.

Two Bucks Each

2011-06-06T22:28:00.001-04:00

What is great, and simultaneously somehow a little bit sad, about our culture.
Sent from my U.S. Cellular BlackBerry® smartphone

The West Virginia Dance Company: "Class"

2011-02-20T16:25:00.001-05:00

Just a little something I did for the WVDC this morning.

The WV Dance Company Rehearses "Chilling Out"

2011-02-13T12:52:00.000-05:00

Tree, Winter's Night

2010-12-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

Its trunk cuts a shape
from the night, while its branches
blur in the moonlight.
The world illustrates it all.
Right wing: stolid. Left: striving.

Baseball Slo-Mo Promos

2010-11-29T16:41:00.000-05:00

Last summer, I made a few scoreboard promotionals for the West Virginia Miners, a local baseball team playing in the Prospect League. I thought I might post a few of them for the heck of it. I call these one-shots, because they are just that: a single-shot of an action in super slow-motion. I especially like the second and third ones...

Pathos

2010-08-24T07:57:00.000-04:00

There was coffee, scrambled eggs and dry toast
in the morning. Then a shower, fresh clothes
and the tying of shoes. Kisses for the wife
and children and then the drive to the office,
delayed by a highway wreck. Fire engines.
Two ambulances. A minivan crumpled
in the median. Stopped at a gas station
for another cup and the lovely young woman
working the counter wore a name tag that
read: "Hope." Our eyes met as she handed
me change and the moment drew out.
Above, the fluorescent lights hummed.
I tilted my head and noticed her pale skin,
her brown hair, her colorless eyes.
I waited for her valediction to fill the
uncomfortable space. I was ready to hear
her say: "Have A Nice Day."
She appeared ashen. She said: "Farewell."
Meetings at ten, at two, at 4:30.
Calls all day. We got several orders.
The problem with that one disgruntled
customer was resolved. The heating
and air units were repaired. Then the
drive home. No sign of a wreck at all.
The next day I read of two fatalities,
an inmate released minutes before
from the regional jail, and his mother.
Whiskey at six that night. Dinner
with the family gathered around. Homework.
Baths. Storytime. Night-night.
The wife and I watched a cliffhanger.

Years from now, as I wait, maybe alone,
for the ride to hospice,
the weight of that day,
and all the ones so like it,
reduced to the feather of "farewell."

Sam Phillips Will Knock Your Socks Off

2010-07-17T22:09:00.000-04:00

My wife bought me a subscription to a year of Sam's music at her site, but I haven't been able to log in yet. So, I haven't heard any of that new stuff. But Sam is one of those artists that occasionally gets into my consciousness and I find myself listening to her obsessively. A high-school friend, my best friend at the time, gave me a cassette of her for a birthday. He was the son of a pastor, and at that time Sam was a Christian artist going by the name of Leslie Phillips. That cassette was the album "The Turning," and it also introduced me to the production work of T-Bone Burnett. T-Bone and Sam spent quite a while married, but divorced a few years back, and her songwriting seems to have gone next-level, if that was even possible.

Anyway, I had never thought to do it, but I searched Sam on YouTube, and there was a treasure trove of stuff. Watch this. These four songs are found on Sam's last record label release, "Don't Do Anything."

I adore this woman's work.

Meet Scott Simons

2010-07-17T21:20:00.006-04:00

I spent some time late last night with some good friends, who showed me some videos by a musical friend of theirs. His name is Scott Simons. He is a native of West Virginia, and his talent does us proud.

He has taken to picking random Facebook friends each week and writing a song about them, which he then posts under the heading: "Wednesday Wallbomb." They not only amuse, but reveal Simons' great talent for pop-music craft. And the videos themselves are fun since they are shot, it seems, from a computer webcam, with occasional background surprises.

Watch them here. So far, there are five of them. All of them are worth watching, but my personal favorite has to be Wallbomb #3, Christie Valo. The second I heard him sing: "she's feeling like crap..." and then drop that melodic "whoa-oh," I became a fan. #5, Brittney Kinsey, is also hilarious. I've been chuckling at "Boom...uh-huh, uh-huh...we just bombed your wall" all day today.

Today I Enter The Third Stage

2010-07-07T19:57:00.006-04:00

"A man's life is divided into four different times. Until you're twenty, you grow up and choose a life. From twenty to forty you lay the groundwork. From forty to sixty you make the money. After sixty you get to screw it up however you like." -- Moe Brillstein, father of manager and producer Bernie Brillstein.

I read this quote as I stood in the book aisle of a Dollar Tree. It was taken from Bernie Brillstein's 1999 memoir: "Where Did I Go Right?" Bernie died in August of 2008, and, cruel fate, his book's shelf life has passed, too. We labor, and our days seem quick and numberless. They are not.

I bought the book -- a dollar well-spent.

Thanks Be To God

2010-06-19T21:20:00.007-04:00

This afternoon, I took my wife to Colonial Downs for the Colonial Turf Cup and the three races that preceded it. I told her as we were leaving, moderate winners, that I had hoped God would send me a sign this day in the form of a life-changing score, and we had played accordingly.

Later, we took the family out for dinner. As we walked back home, my eldest son darted across a street to the door of my parents' condo, where we are staying. A few seconds later, my younger son followed his brother just as a car turned into the road. My younger son, whom I have dreamed terribly three times of losing in just this way, was nearly hit. My wife and I screamed at him as it happened, and he and his brother burst into tears on the curbside, safe but adrenaline-aware of the near-catastrophe that would have irrevocably changed everything.

Message received, Lord. Zero distortion. Sorry for asking for something meaningless.

I'd Like To Produce and Direct Hamlet...

2010-06-18T00:26:00.001-04:00

...the way Kenneth Branagh did, but without the histrionics of his soliloquy in the snow before the intermission, and perhaps with a parallel narrative, one in which Hamlet is 16 years old, and one in which he is 30. Problem is, that might figure to be in the 8-hour epic range. Still, it would be damn interesting.

I think John Gardner was right...Hamlet was meant as a novel. It works in your mind just as well as it does on a stage.

Small-Town Carnival

2010-06-17T23:36:00.000-04:00

I move through the crowd
of drug-skinny parents. Some smoke,
while others take pictures
of the little ones they may one day
resent, revile or reject.
The little ones,
they whirl around and around,
and smile and laugh, oblivious to
the grease-smeared hydraulic jack
that powers the sparkling cars
over the track and the skinny carny
man at the controls, as he smokes
a fat, green cigar.

The world makes me sad.

Tenuous

2010-06-17T07:57:00.000-04:00

The double-yellow
line snakes its way through mountain
country. Driver, keep right.

Woodenisms

2010-06-07T08:11:00.005-04:00

ESPN compiled a list of quotes from the late, great UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, who died at 99 over the weekend.

"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out."
"Never mistake activity for achievement."
"Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then."
"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
"Be prepared and be honest."
"Be quick, but don't hurry."
"You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one."
"You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
"What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player."
"Winning takes talent; to repeat takes character."
"A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment."
"I'd rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent."
"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"
"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes."
"It isn't what you do, but how you do it."
"Ability is a poor man's wealth."
"Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be."
"Consider the rights of others before your own feelings and the feelings of others before your own rights."
"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
"Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability."
"It's not so important who starts the game but who finishes it."
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
"It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen."
"Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful."
"The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team."
"Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming."
"Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts."

Don't you feel wiser having read those? I italicized my favorites.

Beauty

2010-06-06T08:58:00.001-04:00

She is a modern dancer. She is a wit. She loves baseball and horse racing. She keeps score. She does the math. She hates dust. She cuts the grass. She was really good at making babies. She is photogenic. She is crazysexycool. And she deserves a valentine everyday.

And The Greatest Performance Ever By A Horse Goes To....

2010-06-05T08:46:00.002-04:00

1973 was a good year, if only for two things...my wife was born and Secretariat won the Triple Crown in crushing fashion. This is a spine-tingling, awe-inspiring, flat-out amazing performance. I have watched the replay many times, and I have to say my favorite part is when Chick Anderson exclaims at the 1:39 mark of the video: "Secretariat is widening now! He is moving like a TREMENDOUS MACHINE!" If you have never seen it, get ready to witness greatness. If you have seen it, prepare to witness greatness, again. Secretariat is the only horse I think, ever, to run each successive fraction faster than its predecessor, and at a mile-and-a-half! Final time 2:24. A record that still stands and probably always will. Beyer once took a guess at what Big Red's speed figure would have been that day...139. I want to see this kind of greatness once in my life. (If the above image is cropped, right-click and select "Show All." If that doesn't work, right-click and select "Watch on You Tube.")

I Am Always Ripping Off Buffy Holt's Blog

2010-06-05T00:16:00.002-04:00

Buffy Holt is one of my favorite bloggers, although I can't ever seem to merit any comment from her. But then, that all fits in with the name of my blog. Howls. Hurricane. There is so much out there, it is hard to be heard. It is also a theme in my life...people with whom I want to be friends seldom seem to find me as intriguing as I find them. (David Riker...I sure wish we had stayed in touch!)

I found her blog when I googled the words "writing exercise" and was led her way. I came to find out that she went to high school with the sister of a dear friend, even though oceans divide Buffy from her holler hometown. Talk about a small world. But I know some people see me, and I think everyone ought to see this merger of Opry country and Roots revival. Thanks, Buffy. You continue to rock. Watch this. And then, because that song got me thinking about other songs, watch this.

A lot of you wouldn't think it, but Dolly Parton can rip your heart out. That video proves she is a singer, but also, one helluva an actress.

The New Republican Logo

2010-06-04T08:57:00.000-04:00

From Rodeo Clown To Martin Luther King By August 28th....

2010-06-04T08:27:00.005-04:00

Click on the title of this post to link to a page that has an 8-minute video segment from the Colbert Report. I don't regularly watch that show...but while channel-surfing the other night I came across it. This segment is pretty much the last thing that needs to be said about the "Pillsbury Dough Pundit," Glenn Beck...it's hilarious, and I had no idea just how crazy Beck is.

History Repeats

2010-05-12T22:30:00.002-04:00

"Between 1850 and 1900, the population swelled; the cities grew enormously; the Far West was settled; the country became a major industrial power; there was a revolution in transportation and communication; overseas expansion began. The march of technology and science made life easier; at the same time, the social order became more complex, and the growing pains of modernity became more evident. New social cleavages developed. The North-South cleavage was bandaged over in the 1860's and 1870's. Whites took power again, and suppressed African Americans with a vengeance. When the blood of the Civil War dried, the Gilded Age began. This was the factory age, the age of money, the age of the robber barons, of capital and labor at war. And the frontier died. The pioneer, the frontier individualist, had been the American culture hero, free, self-reliant, unencumbered by the weakness and vices of city life. The frontier had been a symbol of an open society; opportunity was as unlimited as the sky. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner wrote his famous essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." He argued for the powerful influence of the frontier on American character and institutions; but as he wrote the essay, Turner announced that the frontier was no more -- the frontier was dead.

"What really passed was not the frontier, but the idea of the frontier. This inner sense, the perception of change, was perhaps one of the most important influences in American law in the late nineteenth century. Between 1776 and the Civil War, dominant public opinion believed in exuberant, never-ending growth, believed that resources were virtually unlimited, that there would be room and wealth for all. The theme of American law before 1850, in Willard Hurst's famous phrase, was the release of energy. The ethos was: Develop the land; grow rich; a rising tide raises all boats. By 1900, if one can speak about so slippery a thing as dominant public opinion, that opinion saw a narrowing sky, a dead frontier, life as a struggle for position, competition as a zero-sum game, the economy as a pie to be divided, not a ladder stretching out beyond the horizon. By 1900 the theme was: Hold the line."

-- from Lawrence Friedman's fascinating book " A History of American Law"

Something I Will Never Know

2010-03-28T22:42:00.001-04:00

A lithe young woman
pressing her red lips to mine
as I ponder the
continuance of O.D. green,
and jungle death days away.

Wait, There Might Be A Purpose To This?

2010-03-03T10:27:00.002-05:00

Taken from the 2/28/10 New York Times Magazine article: "Depression's Upside" by Jonah Lehrer

For Darwin, depression was a clarifying force, focusing the mind on its most essential problems. In his autobiography, he speculated on the purpose of such misery; his evolutionary theory was shadowed by his own life story. “Pain or suffering of any kind,” he wrote, “if long continued, causes depression and lessens the power of action, yet it is well adapted to make a creature guard itself against any great or sudden evil.” And so sorrow was explained away, because pleasure was not enough. Sometimes, Darwin wrote, it is the sadness that informs as it “leads an animal to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial.” The darkness was a kind of light.

And then, toward the end:

The new research on negative moods, however, suggests that sadness comes with its own set of benefits and that even our most unpleasant feelings serve an important purpose. Joe Forgas, a social psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, has repeatedly demonstrated in experiments that negative moods lead to better decisions in complex situations. The reason, Forgas suggests, is rooted in the intertwined nature of mood and cognition: sadness promotes “information-processing strategies best suited to dealing with more-demanding situations.” This helps explain why test subjects who are melancholy — Forgas induces the mood with a short film about death and cancer — are better at judging the accuracy of rumors and recalling past events; they’re also much less likely to stereotype strangers.

Last year Forgas ventured beyond the lab and began conducting studies in a small stationery store in suburban Sydney, Australia. The experiment itself was simple: Forgas placed a variety of trinkets, like toy soldiers, plastic animals and miniature cars, near the checkout counter. As shoppers exited, Forgas tested their memory, asking them to list as many of the items as possible. To control for the effect of mood, Forgas conducted the survey on gray, rainy days — he accentuated the weather by playing Verdi’s “Requiem” — and on sunny days, using a soundtrack of Gilbert and Sullivan. The results were clear: shoppers in the “low mood” condition remembered nearly four times as many of the trinkets. The wet weather made them sad, and their sadness made them more aware and attentive.

The enhancement of these mental skills might also explain the striking correlation between creative production and depressive disorders. In a survey led by the neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen, 30 writers from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop were interviewed about their mental history. Eighty percent of the writers met the formal diagnostic criteria for some form of depression. A similar theme emerged from biographical studies of British writers and artists by Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, who found that successful individuals were eight times as likely as people in the general population to suffer from major depressive illness.

Why is mental illness so closely associated with creativity? Andreasen argues that depression is intertwined with a “cognitive style” that makes people more likely to produce successful works of art. In the creative process, Andreasen says, “one of the most important qualities is persistence.” Based on the Iowa sample, Andreasen found that “successful writers are like prizefighters who keep on getting hit but won’t go down. They’ll stick with it until it’s right.” While Andreasen acknowledges the burden of mental illness — she quotes Robert Lowell on depression not being a “gift of the Muse” and describes his reliance on lithium to escape the pain — she argues that many forms of creativity benefit from the relentless focus it makes possible. “Unfortunately, this type of thinking is often inseparable from the suffering,” she says. “If you’re at the cutting edge, then you’re going to bleed.”

I am reminded of John Gardner...."artists create from a psychic wound."

Read the whole article here.

Making The Bed

2010-02-22T07:47:00.000-05:00

Two small socks nestled
in the sheets. A little boy
found sleep hot last night.

Valentine

2010-02-14T06:57:00.000-05:00

Two hearts intertwined,
two strings tied into a knot,
undoable, strong.

Tossing, Turning

2010-02-11T08:56:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I drove across a snow-covered landscape. High winds pushed the car all over the road, and torrents of snow raced across the road. Several cars were marooned in the median. I reached my destination.

Last night, in an airless hotel room, I dreamt of driving across a snow-covered landscape, and I was as nervous as I was on the actual drive. I awoke this morning with my hands cramped from gripping the steering wheel in my sleep, and a puzzling sentence echoed in my head: "Being human is no laughing matter."

George Bailey

2010-02-09T22:49:00.001-05:00

Alone, foreign place.
A stranger asks: "why are you
here?" Not for this, I
think. Facing me - the sad fact:
no longer who I once was.

Frustration

2010-02-05T23:55:00.003-05:00

My own lack of will,
the silence of others whom
I give careful thought,
crack the can, think, why is it
so hard to matter to them?

Nine Years Old!

2010-01-17T23:47:00.000-05:00

First-born Son

2010-01-17T11:27:00.002-05:00

You still sleep the same. Perfect.

What I Think

2010-01-16T11:26:00.000-05:00

No calls. They think they know.

Technicolor

2010-01-15T01:05:00.005-05:00

Tonight, I watched one of the most intriguing movies ever made, Gary Ross' ultimate high-concept film, "Pleasantville," with the family. It is a movie I have always loved, one I have watched many times for the questions it asks, and the puzzles it presents. When the riot scene arrived, my nine-year old son Danny turned to me, his face bright and excited, and said: "This is like Martin Luther King's days." I said: "Sort of. The rage is the same." He turned his face back to the screen, as the youths wrecked the diner and destroyed all the art the cook-turned-artist had created. Danny asked, almost rhetorically: "Why are people so mean?"

I thought to myself, because they are afraid.

The Action Sequence

2010-01-14T22:26:00.007-05:00

Popcorn movie. Another chase. Another fight. Another escape. I find myself asking, why do we watch? And then I remember, we were all once wild animals. We hid in the bushes from things that might eat us. We watch because it's primal, or maybe because we haven't evolved very far.

All Grammars Leak

2010-01-13T22:27:00.000-05:00

"Noun," says the teacher.
A person, a place, a thing."
She asks the boy: "South,
is it a noun?" The boy squints,
answers "no, it's an idea."

Snapshots

2010-01-12T20:47:00.002-05:00

Snow. Blue jay. Orange.
What if this is the only
thing at which I'm good?

Quantity

2010-01-11T21:48:00.001-05:00

Lucy leans over to me
on the couch and says:
"Love you, too, Daddy.
But Mommy, two times."

Make It Count

2010-01-10T23:22:00.002-05:00

In one room, Tom and
Jerry, another, Schindler's
List. Life is short, hard.

My Face Is Yours, In The Mirror

2010-01-09T10:27:00.001-05:00

"It's not imagination or ideas that our poets primarily trust, but examples, narratives, or specific experiences. There's more than a little of the Puritan diarist still left in poets. Like their ancestors, they worry about the state of their inner lives in between entries about the weather. The problem of identity is ever present, as is the nagging suspicion that one's existence lacks meaning. The working premise, nevertheless, is that each self, even in its most private concerns, is representative, that the "aesthetic problem," as John Ashberry has said, is a "microcosm of all human problems," that the poem is a place where the "I" of the poet, by a kind of visionary alchemy, becomes a mirror for all of us." -- Charles Simic, poet and favorite of mine, from his fascinating essay, "The Flute Player In The Pit."

Long Winter

2010-01-08T23:21:00.002-05:00

One of the workers
threw corn out front for the deer.
The fawns are starving.

Whiteout

2010-01-07T22:56:00.003-05:00

The sheets of snow surge
from the dark night sky, cover
the streetlight with doubt.

Not-So Perfect Fidelity

2010-01-06T23:57:00.016-05:00

Times are changing, as they always do. In the 50's, kids bought records, 45s, and there really weren't things called "albums." That changed in the 60's, with long-playing records, which came to full bloom in the 70's, 80's and 90's. But the turn of the century brought the digital file, and now, people are much more likely to download individual songs than they are to give themselves up to an artist or band that made something meant to be taken as a whole.

I read a book a while back called "Playback" by Mark Coleman, which made me realize that the development of recording technology was always linked to the pursuit of ever-improved fidelity. What we didn't realize in the 70's with our vinyl and 8-tracks, or the 80's with our vinyl and cassettes, their Dolby B Noise Reduction trademark emblazoned upon them, was that the next format - the CD -would allow for "near perfect" recording, even as it pointed the way to the proliferation of "ripped" 128 kbps mp3 files that would provide a level of fidelity good enough for listeners to forget the pursuit of aural perfection. The mp3 has proved "perfect" enough.

It makes me sad, in a way. I will never forget lying on my twin bed in June of 1987, listening to the just-released compact disc of Sgt. Pepper and being riveted by its crispness: the opening guitar of "Getting Better" sounding as if it had been recorded the week before, the lush swirl of strings weeping on "She's Leaving Home," the creaking sound of Paul shifting on the piano bench after the crashing last chord of "A Day In The Life." In those moments I felt that I could taste the air inside that studio in 1967 when that recording was made, and I was amazed by the totality of the album's achievement. Here, in this recording, you had the biggest band in the world at the time pretending to be another group altogether, one playing to a sad crowd looking to forget its woes for a while, before life, and all its sadness and inanity and what, workaday acceptance of the dismal, came crashing back in. The only song The Beatles actually sing to you is the last one, and it rips your heart out. I had known the record for many years prior, but it wasn't until that first time hearing it without the crackle of vinyl attached that I understood. That was the good part of digital. When it was over, I listened to it again. It was that good, and remains so, today.

The bad part of digital is that it just doesn't seem that many bands try to make albums, let alone great albums, anymore. And even if they did, would the listeners want to buy the whole product? It's as if we have returned to the 50's, and the desire is to sell as many singles as possible. Only now we don't buy them at the local hardware store. We download them to our phones. And they don't even come with a flip-side.

Status Cloud

2010-01-05T07:47:00.000-05:00

Clown Shoes

2010-01-05T01:47:00.000-05:00

written for E. D. when she was three years old. Happy Birthday!

My feet were cold, so I warmed them
in a tubful of steamy water.
I watched them redden with the heat
until the whites of my ankles
made it seem as though
I wore clown shoes.
I felt today as though I had forgotten you,
feared that you were slipping from me
into recessed pools too deep for me to swim.
But my red feet brought you back,
my ruddy skin like yours
as a baby, when I scrubbed
you to soapy, cooing perfection.

I read in the paper this
morning of two girls killed
by mad lovers.
I fear the future. I can't
invent it for you, and my red
skin reminds me that pain
comes for everyone.
Soon I may not be able
to run to where you are.
There may be no warm water
in which to soak your blue body.
As soon as you have come alive
to my mind, you recede.
That I could know you always
as a baby sleeping in my arms,
the scatheless, rose-fold of your lips
on mine, your breath a kiss tickling
like feathers.

That I could warm your feet
when they are cold.
That I could know you always,
that I could know,
that I could turn back,
hold still.

Gratitude

2010-01-04T00:27:00.001-05:00

from 1995

If you only knew, Mrs. Bennett,
you wouldn't have smiled
and said: "Call me, Mimi."
Even though I plan
to buy you a bottle of wine
for your hospitality,
if you only knew, Mrs. Bennett,
that I nearly burned down
your big, fine house,
that iron I left face down
on the towel I used to cover
the coffee table I used
as an ironing board.
It was hours ago I pressed
this blue shirt.
If you only knew, Mimi,
of all the other things, too,
you wouldn't have taken my
hand in yours and smiled
that seductive smile and said:
"Mimi. Just call me Mimi."

Fragment Found In A Folder Labeled "1995"

2010-01-03T00:27:00.002-05:00

I had a chance to drive across Kansas once, but Nebraska's blue line curved across the fold of the map like a smirk. A friend, gaunt fellow, always clad in a black blazer he told me he'd found on the racks at the Goodwill, told me Kansas was boring anyway. He rolled his own cigarettes, smoked too much because he rolled them so well. He wrote wild nonsense stories, always set in Kansas, with one-word titles like "Tame," always about the adventures of goblin with a see-through stomach so you always knew what he had eaten. In this one, he ate a diploma and some one's car keys, and a box of stale candy stolen from the car of an unfortunate, murderous blonde, who was wanted for trying to feed an Australian prime minster some poisoned blowfish.

Kansas, for my thin, smoking friend, an imagined home of Sendak, with denizens hanging signs at the state line that read: "Welcome to Kansas: Where The Wild Things Are." The gas-station attendant, who cropped up out of nowhere, told the goblin as he paid for his fill-up that Kansas was deceptively near the equator, that people didn't know that, that its largest ethnic group was Italian, and that fifty-seven were confirmed dead in an airline crash a couple of miles up the road. "A couple of miles up the road," he said, "you're going to see a black scar smoking a mile long through corn as green as any of that corn you see in Brazil."

None of my friend's stuff was ever published, of course, and his writing style suffered since he was of the Divine-Providence school of No Revising and it didn't matter to him if there was no plot, no meaning. He told me once that he modeled his stories on his life, which perplexed me since they made little sense. Still, I loved the absurdity of his images. Now, late at night, as I drink and smoke and ponder the blue rings settling in front of the blue light of the television, that friend's face won't come to mind. But I remember the goblin with his see-through stomach, and I regret not driving across Kansas.

An Unexpected View

2010-01-02T00:27:00.001-05:00

From the causeway came, of a sudden, the sea,
the sun glaring through a criss-cross of wires,
and straight was the path of gold the sun blazed,
the needy world moving this sun-streaked barge.

Resolutions

2010-01-01T00:27:00.001-05:00

1. Finish one thing every day.
2. Get down to a BMI of 15 percent by my 40th Birthday.
3. Make at least 12 pieces of media.
4. Read like I used to.
5. Cultivate some friends that do the kinds of things for me that I do for them.
6. Volunteer somewhere once a month.
7. Get my mojo workin'.

Christmas Eve

2009-12-24T22:37:00.002-05:00

Perpetuated
by our hope that our children
believe in Magic!

'Twas The Night Before Pittsburgh

2009-11-26T00:53:00.009-05:00

'Twas the night before Pittsburgh, when all through the state
no Mount'neer slept well, nor could hardly a'wait.
The beer was iced in the cooler all tight
in hopes that a Win would come forthright.

The frat boys were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of co-eds danced in their heads.
Mama in her nightie, and I in my jeans,
had just settled in for a long night's scene.

When outside The Lair there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from her arms to see what's the matter.
Away to the street I flew like a flash,
and down to the stadium I went in a dash.

The moon on the turf and the empty silver rows
gave the light of a night game to the objects below.
When what to my wondering self should approach,
but faint apparitions of players and a coach.

The players were bedecked in Old Gold and Blue,
while the coach wore a vest just like Coach Stew.
More rapid than Panthers, his charges they came
out of that tunnel as he shouted their names:

"Now Harris! Now Talley!
Now, Walker! Now, Avon!
On, Bulger! On, Amos!
On, Patrick and Tavon!
Past the first down marker,
To the goal line move the ball!
Now dash again! Dash again!
Dash again all!"

As dry leaves that before Thanksgiving winds fly
when they meet an obstacle mount to the sky,
so to the field these Mountaineers sailed,
with purpose, passion, and the chant of "All hail!"

And then, in a twinkling, I heard from the stands,
the "Let's Go!" cheer, the sheer hope of the fans.
As I turned my head and was turning around
the empty stadium was filled with the sound.

The shape of it all just stuck in my mind.
The curve of the decks, the field with its lines.
The heartbreaks and joys that we have each shared.
The joys and heartbreaks still yet to be dared.

This team - how they try. Their effort so true.
All I can ask from the Old Gold and Blue.
And then, in a blink, the coach was beside me.
He said: "Noel needs his touches. That is a key."
His long arms folded, his jaw clenched tight.
It was clear that he knew we were in for a fight.
"But fear not, my lad, because I don't believe
those Panthers are aware of our need to achieve."

He spoke in couplets, his headset not right,
and I laughed when he spoke, in spite of the slight.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke no more to me, went straight to the sidelines
and barked to the men just the right guidelines.
He told them that story of the man in the well,
told them to scratch, and to claw, to get out of that cell.

They gathered around him, all bouncing together,
and he shouted at them they would remember forever,
the night of this Brawl and its mem'ry burnt bright.

He shouted: "Leave no doubt! Leave no doubt tonight!"

Breeder's Cup Friday

2009-11-06T07:34:00.002-05:00

Day 1 begins at
3:35! Let it be
a day of magic.

Spooktacular!!!!!

2009-10-31T23:15:00.000-04:00

Pick 4 Strategy

2009-10-23T08:57:00.005-04:00

For my horse racing friends...the following is a post I made on a horse racing forum I frequent:

"This may be old hat to some of the pros out there, but, in the interest of mentoring, I wanted to tell you guys about the Pick 4 strategy I have used successfully for some time now. It has resulted in quite a few profitable days for me. The above image demonstrates how I used to play the Pick 4 - many horses in some races, and a single that I must get home in order to have a chance at winning the bet. I now believe that is the wrong way to play.

First, you must demand of yourself that you are right about two races in the sequence. By "right," I mean, you get a single home. Here is the sweet part...it can be a single in any two races of the four-race sequence.

So, handicap each race and make a top selection in each, henceforward referred to as your "A" horse. Then select three other contending horses in each race, henceforward referred to as B, C and D.

Now, structure your tickets like this:

Ticket 1: A with A with ABCD with ABCD
Ticket 2: A with ABCD with A with ABCD
Ticket 3: A with ABCD with ABCD with A
Ticket 4: ABCD with A with A with ABCD
Ticket 5: ABCD with A with ABCD with A
Ticket 6: ABCD with ABCD with A with A

On a dollar-base, each ticket will cost you $16 for a total investment of $96, or $24 per race, which is right around what I try to average as a small player in horizontal wagers. If you are right twice about any of your top selections -- and being the stellar handicappers you are, you will be! -- you will be in line for a nice payout, especially since you will be four-deep in the other two races which, hopefully, bring home a price! And if you hit three top selections, you hit the Pick 4 three times. If your top selection rolls home in all four races, you score six times.

As a side-note, I usually try to have at least two of my four top selections be in the 5-1 to 8-1 range. I have found that if you can get one or two of these kinds of horses home, the payouts are nearly $1,000 on average, which, as a top selection, means you may hit multiple times. This strategy also works well, maybe even better, with Pick 3's. Demand of yourself just one correct opinion and structure three tickets the same way:

Ticket 1: A with ABCD with ABCD
Ticket 2: ABCD with A with ABCD
Ticket 3: ABCD with ABCD with A.

My favorite wagers are Pick 3's and exactas. Some of you might fear that an E or F horse could come in and ruin all of your tickets. That’s a good point, but we are talking about gambling here! Risk is always involved, and I say if you can't handicap correctly in two races out of four, or one out of three, you don't deserve to win. Be bold, or be wrong. I don't know about you, but many times I have played a Pick 4 and been right with my top selection in a race where I picked four or five horses, and wrong about one in which I singled. With this strategy, any two correct selections get you close to home and a decent score.

Also, you can shorten or lengthen the number of horses played in each leg of the sequence. Some races, it is easy to see the race is between just two contenders. Others are inscrutable, and you might want to go six deep, or even buy the field!

Keep in mind, that I don't play every Pick 4. Just as you can't create value in a race where a 6-5 wins over a 5-2 over a 3-1, sometimes the Pick 4 should be avoided. You have to have a good, hard opinion that there is value to be had in the sequence. If I don't see what I consider two vulnerable favorites in the four races, then I pass.

As for the size of the wager -- $96 in the 4 x 4 x 1 x 1 configuration -- it is hard to take if you get knocked out in the first leg. But, as I alluded to earlier, I am a $25- a-race player in win betting. When I play the Pick 3 or 4, I don't make win bets. I will, however, play multiple exactas. (And when I say multiple, I mean A with BCDE four times, and BCDE with A three times...your A Horse should not be the favorite.) It has frequently happened that I have had a Pick 3 or a Pick 4 die, only to make back more than I had wagered when a horse I had keyed forward and backward in the exacta came home coupled with a price horse!

At the very least, try this strategy with a Pick 3 sometime. Last Sunday I was practicing - building tickets, but not betting them -- and I played every rolling Pick 3 through the Pick 6 at Santa Anita. There are four Pick 3's within a Pick 6. I was right about two races -- the third and fourth in the sequence. This meant that I hit the first and second Pick 3's, and was alive to four horses in each of the final two legs of the third and fourth Pick 3's. Now, a horse I didn't include won in the last leg, but had one of my four come in, I would have hit four straight Pick 3's off of just two correct opinions. As it was, I would have hit three of the four had I wagered, and would have wound up with profits in the 7-1 range, give or take, since the payouts would have been smaller than posted had I actually been in the pool.

And one more thing…there are two Pick 3's within a Pick 4. Many times I back up a thin Pick 4, with a larger spread of horses in the Pick 3. This alleviates the fear that an E or F will knock me out in either the first or last legs, since I include him in the Pick 3. Also, in a Pick 4 sequence where it appears that only one favorite is vulnerable, I eschew the Pick 4 altogether, and only play the two Pick 3's.

May you crush the mutuels! And remember, when you win at the track, you are really just walking out with money lost by handicappers, or gamblers, who were wrong that day."

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

2009-10-22T21:57:00.000-04:00

Six years later, you still have the magic! We are so happy to be your parents! Love, Mommy & Daddy

Honeymoon

2009-10-09T09:10:00.000-04:00

For Heidi, on our 10th Anniversary

On a cool autumn evening, like tonight,
I can ignore the extremes
and breathe the small of your back, the heaven
of heat from your skin. I am so happy
you are alive. I close my eyes,
inhale. I see unfolding, a long happy cluster
of seagulls and again, our young bodies
sit on the sand at Tobacco Bay, the water
blue as your eyes sometimes seem in winter.
The endless sun burns down into a daze.
Then your head blocks the light, and the birds,
and you drift hover before you kiss me,
smiling as I anticipate your lips growing more
to mine, then meeting…a long, long kiss of love
and youth and after, I am ready to go back
to the boat for the body of your love.
We make a rhythm with breaths and slaps
and tongues and moans until our bodies rhyme.
And now I know,
with the chill of Fall in the air,
with two boys asleep in the next room,
with one little girl curled into your sleeping form,
with my lips on the small of your back,
the meaning of the couplets we began that day,
the Bermuda in my mind evermore to stay.

Finest Cloth From Another Land

2009-10-09T09:07:00.000-04:00

For Heidi, on our 10th Anniversary

The nuptial crush fitted our greenish shapes
into a loom -- swatches of flesh and limbs
woven alike to a velvet we drape,
again and again, o’er sweet-scented skin.
Ten years today, our touch remains a vow,
and I know you as I know the full moon,
ever the same, ever different. Now,
a bewitching light, next veiled, asleep soon.
We are the soft cloth from our own selves met.
Braided, after we’ve come…velvet, velvet.

Just Got Paid

2009-10-05T17:01:00.007-04:00

The dull ones avoid stories.

But you can trust the sweetbreads your Fridays

will offer, when they really want your presence,

which they’ll redecorate. Treasure the still

untested pennyworth. Keep your key fruit. Ask

for more tropes than you think you’ll need. Listen

more to fountains and less to collective unconscious. Love your

youngest chieftain the most, regardless. Back to

stories: dress warm, take a Friday, don’t eat the grapes,

drink them, don’t stand near the tall trellis work,

and keep the yearning down--the wind won’t listen,

and no one will see in you a daredevil. It’s too hard to hear

you over all the thumbscrews. But you’re not

Leander, except that we can’t stop you from what

you’ve planned to do. In the legend, no one leaves

the staff of life in the chapter house--we never see

the feast, Miranda held before lions.

So don’t wait for skulls to crack from syllables. Feel

the story’s sweet stillness invade you to the skim,

the strange, sore come-ons of the wine. Embrace

your childhood’s ragged pragmatics and that of Friday’s.

Run naked through the tall tales. Weave flouts

into your haikus. Bellow at cat and mouse.

If you dare, scream at the go-between. Babble as

if you thought wordplay could save. It can.

Drink cold beer with the railbirds, so much better

than therapy. I’d come with you, laughing, if I could.

I am not dull.

How I Came To Horse Racing

2009-10-03T01:24:00.002-04:00

I was 19. A sophomore at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. On Friday, May 5 1989, I was drinking Maker's Mark whiskey for the first time and talking with an intriguing, blonde-haired girl, whose class and breeding were apparent seconds after you met her. She invited me to her parents' house the next day so that I might attend a Derby party. "Dress well," she said, as she kissed me on both cheeks and bid me goodnight. "And not too much whiskey tonight. Tomorrow, you have your first julep."

So the next day, clad in chinos, a linen shirt and a borrowed blazer, julep in hand, I witnessed Sunday Silence defeat Easy Goer by 2 1/2 lengths in the first of their four epic meetings. Everyone in that long-ago room was disappointed with the outcome. They were rooting for Easy Goer, the Kentucky-bred and below even-money favorite who had stayed on the East Coast. Perhaps it was my raconteur-nature, but I was pulling for Sunday Silence. I liked his dark, black-stallion quality. I just thought he was beautiful. And I didn't really know anything about the rivalries between Kentucky, California, and New York.

By the time Easy Goer deprived Sunday Silence of his Triple Crown in the Belmont, I was learning to read the Form and discovering that knowing about racing was a money-making proposition. And when Sunday Silence won a neck over Easy Goer in the thrilling Breeder's Cup Classic that year, I had become a full-on addict.

So much of what I love about the game, what I want from the game, stems from those formative moments. I don't know that I have ever again witnessed the kind of rivalry those two great horses had. But it was intense. Granted, I was in Lexington, horse-capital of the world, but one couldn't drive anywhere and not see a bumper sticker declaring which horse someone supported. Can we ever get back to that level of excitement and anticipation of the next meeting between two greats?

Looking at their lifetime PPs just now, I notice that Easy Goer had 14 wins from 20 starts and was never out of the money. Sunday Silence had nine wins from 14 starts and was never worse than second! And, interestingly, both lost to a horse named Criminal Type at the end of their careers. I wonder whatever became of him. I know what became of me. I became a horseplayer.

Happy Birthday, Little One

2009-09-24T08:01:00.003-04:00

Three years old already! Slow down! You are our last one.

Every Day Counts

2009-09-23T23:18:00.003-04:00

Ninth-grade English at Linsly required a poetry recitation. I was assigned "The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy. Had I the skill I have now, I would have won that competition. But then, as a youth, I butchered it. I didn't even make the final, where the best four of the ninth-graders performed before the school assembly.

Searching for something to write about tonight, since, again, I am trying to do one little thing each day -- to earn something from the day, but more, to boost my present morale, I again came across Hardy's poem, written on the last day of the 19th century.

Read it here: http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15506.

Hardy was not the happiest of guys. You can tell from the poem that his demeanor leaned toward the pessimistic. The gloom of the world presages the horrors of the coming century, and Hardy didn't even know how bad they were going to be. But this bird, this frail, gaunt bird hints at a hope not known, or noticed, by us. And Hardy went into his house, left that gloom behind, and made something that goes on.

It is perfect that I read this poem tonight. Hope is always there. Even if you are unaware. The matter, the critical matter, is being in the moment, and then making something from it.

Workaday Blues

2009-09-22T20:07:00.005-04:00

When I have features that I cease to like
Before my penalty has grown my braids,
Before high-piled boons, in angry charge,
Hold like rich garrets the full-faded graft;
When I see, on the nightdress of face cards,
Many twirling sylphs in a high frolic,
And think that I may never live to shed
This shackle, with the magic glass of change;
When I feel the creases in my forehead,
And know someday I shall never see you again,
But be mere remains, the shadow powder
Of unreflecting loss—then at the shop
Of the wide working day I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Death to low notes do sink.

Abingdon

2009-09-22T19:47:00.005-04:00

Two beautiful girls
walk the crosswalk in front of
my car. Do they know

that the King of France once walked
this street? The sun shining on
their hair and shoulders
was the same.

Danny Wrote This On A Piece Of Paper

2009-09-18T19:44:00.000-04:00

Dad's finally home.
Football on TV.
New Moneyball.
It's gamenight!
I am so happy.

Somehow Heartbreaking

2009-09-09T18:39:00.001-04:00

Framed posters hang in
a rural Italian place.
Sailboats and sea sun-
faded to blue on dark blue.
Words above: Naples. Capri.

Tarantino's Top 20 Since 1992

2009-08-27T11:20:00.002-04:00

This is a man whose opinions I respect...pretty interesting stuff.

Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz4K-Rxx2Bk.

First Day Of School, For Some

2009-08-26T22:34:00.004-04:00

They just grow up too fast.

Days With My Father

2009-08-05T11:40:00.003-04:00

Would that they were filled
with grace, kindness, and respect.
We're just not that way.
Skin assaulted by a bruise
heals, but the flesh remembers.

The Quiet House

2009-08-03T20:33:00.002-04:00

At the center of
the stillness, inert objects
remind me of faces.

The South

2009-05-20T11:44:00.001-04:00

You know you are in
It when unsweetened tea is
Not Available.

Faith

2009-05-10T01:49:00.003-04:00

The croupier drops
the ball on the spinning wheel.
I really believe
it will land on seven. I really
believe. But the ball moves
around the circle, and the wheel
spins
for my whole life. I will
never know whether I was
right about the seven.
I can only live my life
as if seven will be a winner.
Maybe that is all that
it takes to win.

The Life-Changing Score

2009-04-11T21:14:00.004-04:00

Frontrunners and chalk
rule the day. Second choices
run second for poor
pay. Steam rolls off the rippled
champ, who cares not Why I Play.

Binary

2009-04-10T00:19:00.001-04:00

Tattooed down her spine,
the barmaid's name in Ones and
Zeroes. She asks me:
"Do you have a tab, sweetie?"
Numbers lengthen, and reduce.

Parenthood

2009-01-30T13:47:00.006-05:00

How great my joy, my love now bound,
since first your clear, bright eyes met mine.
The years too quickly flow and frown
how great my joy, my love now bound
by trickle of tears, murmur of sound,
'til far from this mouth, you will mark the sign,
how great my joy, my love now bound,
since first your clear, bright eyes met mine.

It Goes By So Fast

2009-01-29T13:19:00.008-05:00

I heard a Maxine Kumin poem on The Writer's Almanac today. Read it here.

When I first read Kumin, I was a freshman in college. It was 1988. The poem was one she had written about the suicide of a friend (allegedly Anne Sexton). She must have been in her early 60's then, because she is now 83.

Clouds move over the earth. Rivers flow. The sun rises and sets. The moon waxes and wanes. The seasons move from slush and gray to green to gold and red, to slush and gray again. I feel old, and worse than that, passed by.

We're Friends, Right?

2009-01-28T21:32:00.004-05:00

I was jotting a note to an acquaintance yesterday about the way people move in and out of one's life. In it, I mentioned that there have been recurring themes in my life of unrequited and unbestowed friendship.

I can think of at least five people in my past with whom I have much desired a real and lasting friendship -- two of them college professors, one of them an elderly writer I came to know while living in New York City, and two of them people I got to know while studying filmmaking. In each case, I wanted more from the contact than they did. In each case, our contact was brief and I haven't heard from any of them in five, or more, years.

Then, there are several people I know that desire a deeper friendship with me. I avoid their calls, respond only briefly to their emails, and extricate myself from plans involving me. I don't know why. I just don't sense a deep underpinning with them. None of them are people to whom I would want to explain myself. I suppose the feeling they engender in me is the very same one I engendered in those five that avoided my calls, responded tersely to my mail, and bailed on lunch dates.

Only so many people can matter to a person. There is only so much room for the real connections in life. How do we get around the fact the most of the time, people we might want to love, aren't going to love us back?

I am reminded of a subway ride I took once at rush hour in NYC. I squeezed on to the train next to a plain-pretty blonde woman. Everyone was body-to-body on that train, intimate as lovers, only clothed. I had a thought then and I whispered in one of her ears: "Do you remember how easy it was to make friends in grade school?" She looked at me with her wide, clear, blue eyes. "All you had to do, then" I said, "was ask: 'Do you want to be friends?'" She smiled. "So do you want to be friends," I asked. She said "yes." A conversation ensued. We exchanged numbers.

I never called her and, as far as I know, she never called me.

25 Random Things

2009-01-27T15:36:00.004-05:00

1. My greatest, and maybe only, fears are losing a child or my wife.

2. I never thought I would come back to my hometown. I lived in Princeton, then Charlotte, then Pittsburgh, then Boston, then DC, then NYC, then DC, again. In most of those places I was a bartender. In a couple of them I sold cars. In one of them I was a sportswriter. In each of them, I could pack everything I owned into my small car. The time spent in NYC occurred when I went to film school. At the end of that great string of cities, I was writing grants and it was lucrative, but mind-numbing. My father called me and told me he needed me in his business because his health was failing and there was no heir-apparent...so, here I am, in Beckley these last seven years.

3. I drive. A lot. 30,000-50,000 miles each year. It sucks to be so solitary, but it also allows me time to think about things, to listen to the world full of ideas via XMPR and NPR, and to hear all kinds of music.

4. I have been married twice. The first marriage began when I was 18. I am living proof that no one can tell an 18-year old anything. By the time we finished college, we were different people. We separated the week of graduation. She went back to the northern Kentucky/Cincinnati area, taking our daughter with her. I moved to Charlotte.

5. My daughter from my first marriage is now about to be 19. She is a freshman in college, and I am very proud of her. I will always feel, though, that I let her down as a father. Once, I was visiting with her and we were at dinner at an Olive Garden. I was telling her some detail about some place I had lived and she asked me why I had never moved to Cincinnati. I had no answer, because I could have. I could just as easily have bartended in Cincinnati as I could have anywhere else and, in that moment, I knew the fact that I had never chosen to be near her as she grew up had harmed her.

6. I have had three physicals at the Greenbrier Clinic over the last 15 years. The first happened when I was 24 or so and I was told then that I had hearing in the top 1 percent of all people on earth. (Perhaps because my vision is so bad? God is a pretty fair entity...) This last physical, though, done three years ago...my hearing had slipped into the 10th percentile. Aging sucks.

7. Growing up, I desperately wanted to become a record producer. I had two four-tracks, four keyboards, a drumkit, two turntables and a microphone (really). I even took a visit to the University of Pittsburgh because of a sound production program they had -- a big step for a Mountaineer fan from birth. I am still the kind of geek that can tell you who his seven favorite producers are (George Martin, Daniel Lanois, Lindsey Buckingham, T-Bone Burnett, Nile Rodgers, Steve Lillywhite and Quincy Jones).

8. I went to school to study music, but I became frustrated by the fact that my ability with instruments would never match what I could hear in my head. And I still struggle to read music. This is why I am today such a fan of looping progams. They enable me to create pieces with parts that I would never in a million years be able to play.

9. I majored in literature and philosophy. My facility with the English language has never hindered me...in fact, it is a strength of mine. Due to the stresses of divorce, I left a philosophy course incomplete (that paper on Foucault still forthcoming), so I am not sure I ever got that diploma. I preferred literature, anyway. Philosophy is fun until you work yourself into the inevitable hall of mirrors shaped like a a round box, at which point I always said, "to hell with it, let's go get a beer." Stories have all the philosophy in code, and the good ones take you somewhere.

10. In fact, my favorite sentence may be: "Tell me a story."

11. I now write, direct, edit, and score a short film on occasion. Someday I want to make a really good feature. I am fond of an Orson Welles quote: "It only takes one."

12. I very nearly went to Emerson in Boston to get an MFA in Creative Writing. I was out drinking at a bar the night before I had to tell them if I was in or out (they had offered me a spot). I was with several people already in the program -- fascinating people with names like Edward and Nicole -- and it occurred to me then that a whole lot of people want to lead the lives of writers, but very few actually want to write, or more to the point, have much to say. These types...they will try to to write a couple books and if they get published, well then, maybe a career. But mostly, their work is merely a prop used to bed women, procure a teaching position, or, more than anything else, certify them as really, really, really good readers of other people's stuff.

13. At this point, I may be one of the above -- that is, I want to lead the life of a writer, but I don't write nearly as much as I used to, or as I would like. I rationalize this by saying that things are always stewing and when the work comes, it comes. Again...it only takes one.

14. This is actually one of the themes that interests me the most. I call it, "the art, or the life." There is a great moment in Woody Allen's "Bullets Over Broadway." It opens the film. Rob Reiner, as the character Flender, asks his fellow literati which they would save in a burning building, if they could save just one: the only known copy of Shakespeare's plays or some anonymous human. I would save the human (I think Woody hints at his choice in the title of the film...), which is why I am not sure I would ever lay claim to the title of "artist." I don't think I am capable of infliciting the kind of damage that would be necessary for me to be one. I just love the people in my life too much, and even if it means forsaking authorship of some great poem or film or song, I prefer a legacy of good husband, good father, good son, good brother. Not that it is always an either/or question...the art, or the life. Maybe I can have my cake and eat it, too....the art AND the life. Anyway, I find it ironic that people create art to connect to other people (usually, in solitude...think about that!), but given the choice between art and a person, many would choose the art...doesn't that denial of humanity run counter to what art is supposed to be about?

15. I have never understood "have my cake, and eat it, too." Why can't you eat it? It is YOUR CAKE! I know, I know...the meaning is once you eat your cake, then you can't have it again because it is no longer in your possession. So, shouldn't the phrase be: "Once you eat your cake, it's gone!" Just doesn't have that ring....

16. Sort of like two planes almost collide in the sky and the newscasters say it was a "near-miss." Actually, it was a "near-hit." These kinds of inaccuracies drive me nuts.

17. I dislike broadcast journalists...more specifically, I dislike people who want to be broadcast journalists.

18. I have a lot of opinions. Most of them unfounded. I might say something at a cocktail party that I think I mean, but I can only find out what I really think about something by writing about it, or framing it in some kind of story. I think writing about things leads to a much deeper understanding of them...

19. ...but then, my relationship with my father is complicated. Very complicated. I have written about it for years and my understanding of it, and him, is as yet shallow at best. It is my most earnest wish that my children never feel the conflict and doubt I feel...which is why I look at most of the things I create as letters to my children to be read by them when they are adults.

20. I despise the greenishness of Fluorescent light and Fuji film. I love the fleshy orange tone of Tungsten, and Kodak. Of course, most cameras are digital now, so film stock doesn't matter so much. (Note to amateurs: when things are backlit, turn on the flash, even when outside. You will get a great exposure!)

21. It used to be that people were what their actions said they were. Now, people seem to define themselves by what they like, or what they will buy. I think it is far more interesting to know how a couple would work together (or not) to change a flat tire, than it is to know what kind of car they own, or what kind of tires they put on that car. Just as I think it is far more interesting to talk to someone about how they would prefer to help someone, than to discuss their political affiliation...

22. ...I am way over on the left. I am a registered Democrat, but the Democrats as a whole are not far enough left for me. I have always been bothered by the fact that we have 500 television channels, dozens of cell phone companies, and 31 flavors of ice cream, but we only have two legitimate political parties from which to choose in this country. I would prefer something that included a great many party affiliations and relied on coalitions formed between them to govern. Our system allows too many voices to be lost in the din. I believe in the Great Society. We all give something, and we all get a whole lot back. That is the original idea behind taxation. It annoys me when Republicans rail about lowering taxes, because it seems implied that nothing comes from that money. (Next time you want a road built, or the fire department to come put out that raging fire, pay for it yourself.) I think our current economic crisis pointedly confirms that trickle-down theory fails every time for the very reason Gordon Gecko said it works: because people will always be greedy. If left to themselves, people will almost always base decisions on personal gain rather than communal gain. Thus the instituion of government exists to help us toward the greater good for all. Granted, government sometimes becomes corrupt and it may always be flawed, but I hope for a system that appeals to the better angels of our nature, rather than the blackest ones. Obama, for me, represents a new era, and hope, in leadership. Even though I think he is pretty centrist, you have to be to get things done in this system, and he's made Smart the new Sexy. I hope he doesn't disappoint me with too much compromise, as Clinton did within the first 100 days (Clinton signed NAFTA - some would say the single most conservative document in economic history).

23. I drove through a blizzard from Beckley to Lewisburg to take my wife on our first date. She was dancing The Snow Queen in The Nutcracker at the Greenbrier, and on her off-night we went to Food and Friends. At dinner, as I was talking to her, she leaned across the table and kissed me in mid-sentence. To this day, I have no idea what I was saying at the time (...which bothers me). I replay that scene in a lot of things I create. (Man speaking, beautiful woman leans across table, kisses him.) Anyway, we have shared our lives ever since and much of the joy in my life has derived from that snow-driven night.

24. I have had plenty of opportunities to wreck this marriage. I never have, and I hope I never will. I hope she never does, either. And here we are heading into our 11th year together. Let me tell you, I don't envy my wife. By turns loving, nurturing, moody, insecure, jealous, confident, grounded, teary, ego-centric, happy, clinging, giving, doubtful, satisfied...I am not easy.

25. You can probably tell from reading this, but I love parantheticals. I no doubt overuse them, especially in the context of writing a letter, or something like this. In a story, I would probably revise them out (except if it is something meant to be funny -- they make funny things funnier), but I find they fit in with the way in which my mind works. Thoughts breed tangential thoughts and I rarely leave them out. Further, I find the parenthetical voice (happy-go-layers upon layers) post-modern.

Postsrcipt: After such an exercise in self-absorption, I wonder who really cares to know this stuff about me? Someone, somewhere...

Chess Lesson #1

2009-01-11T19:47:00.001-05:00

Me: Now, the rooks can move as many open squares as they want, but only vertically and horizontally. And the bishops can move any number of open squares they want, but only diagonally.

Baxter: Dad, why are you speaking Spanish to tell me the rules?

Art Where You Find It, Or...Just Interest Me, Will You?

2009-01-10T14:27:00.012-05:00

I was getting drowsy on the drive home, so I stopped at a Border's bookstore for a cup of dark roast. While waiting for the coffee to cool a bit, I perused some books on chess. In the introduction to one of the books was the story of Marcel Duchamp. Some of you may have seen the image on the right before. It is Duchamp's work "Nude Descending A Staircase No. 2" and it scandalized the New York art world in 1915. Duchamp later moved on to do what he called "readymades." They were found objects repositioned and presented as art -- the idea being that the viewer would be forced to consider the mundane objects he used everyday as potential pieces of art. The most famous of these was one called "Fountain," which was, in fact, a urinal signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt."

(A sidenote: in 2004 a collection of 500 artists voted "Fountain" the most influential artwork of the 20th century...perhaps that speaks to the distance between the populace and the denizens of art culture? I see the point of the piece, but the most influential artwork of the century? I have my doubts, but then I am unable of stating what I think art is. I just know it when I see and feel it.)

Anyway, what I didn't learn about Duchamp all those years ago in Mrs. Wolsk's Art Appreciation class was something discussed in this chess book's introduction. Duchamp (pictured left with a chess set I wouldn't want to use), despite being a crucial figure in art, one on par with Picasso, gave up what he called "retinal art" to play and study chess. And I mean obsessively to play and study chess -- as in 10 to 12 hours everyday, for the rest of his life.

This game can do that to you. I looked on YouTube just now for that scene in "Searching For Bobby Fischer" where actor Austin Pendleton is pulled away from a contest for a bit of conversation, but cannot remove his mind from the game, muttering: "I've got him thinking...maybe I can get a pawn off of him."

Somehow, it gets into your head sometimes, and you wind up not being able to think about much else. It has such a subtle beauty of design. For instance, who could have thought to make pawns ever-mindless foot soldiers, capable only of forward motion. Who could have thought to make knights move in their L-shape fashion, while simultaneously limiting each bishop to one color of square? Who could have thought to make the rooks powerful in their specifically lateral way? And who was the feminist so ahead of his/her time involved in the game's design -- the one who made the Queen all powerful in her movement, while the King can move anywhere he wants, but must limp along one square at a time?

Duchamp wrote: “The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” He furthered this thought later, saying: "I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position."

Is that not absolutely true? There is no doubt that the game allows for a very specific expression of self, but one that follows ancient rules in space occupied by 64 light and dark squares. And the sense of self one finds when one plays the game isn't one mired in consumer culture. It is a concentration, an "otherness" not unlike the one D.H. Lawrence wrote about -- looking down at the board in the midst of a game, going through the permutations of "if he moves here, then I take here, then he takes back here, and then I put him in check..." one is fully aware, yet fully absorbed.

Duchamp's study of chess led him to an obsession for studying endgames. He composed the famous chess riddle below. White to move, and win. (Not in one move, but several.) Many masters of the game have been unable to find a solution, so if you do, you should let someone know. Perhaps there isn't one, and I think that might be Duchamp's point.

This is a guy who was trained as a painter in the traditional sense, and then proceeded to try on every style of modern art: symbolist, fauvist, cubist...in fact, many critics think the above nude was done in jest, to ridicule the cubists. (I am not smart enough to see that humor...!) He found in modern art, I think, artists making puzzles and viewers trying to solve them. Consumer culture craves neat, little packages of digestible goods that can be repeatedly resold. Art can provide that. (Well, maybe not great art.) Chess, on the other hand, offers an original moment each game. The first two or three moves may be the same, but from then on, an infinite array of possibilities become available. There may be a solution. Someone may win the game. But then, some games end deadlocked.

In fact, Duchamp noted in his pamphlet called "Opposition and Sister Squares Reconciled," that the fact that there are 32 squares of each color, lined up in the order they are, leads us to look at the game as one that doesn't require victory, but rather stalemate. I take that to mean that winning can be accomplished only through two ways: the cruel domination of superior wits, or the false pretense of human folly. Thus, a chess game headed for stalemate becomes the perfect metaphor for what art might be: a thought-provoking exercise conducted between equals that has a resolution, but no victory, no defeat...only the interest of those playing, or those watching the play.

In closing, consider these words from Duchamp: "Here is my move, interest me."

At The Door

2009-01-07T07:59:00.004-05:00

As I button my shirt this morning,
that memory recurs--

that one from that night when
I went walking late and a lone, white
wolf with dark socks
came out of the woods just ahead
and sat on sinewy haunches by the road
to eye me.
Flushed with adrenaline, I proceeded.
His powerful head turned with my steps.
When I was past, I didn't look back,
but even now, I feel his gaze burning
into my back, and know something
I can't articulate.

I pull on pants and shoes, ready for the day,
preen in the mirror. None of us knows
which outfit we choose will be the last.

Grown Backwards

2009-01-07T07:36:00.003-05:00

This particular flaw--
observing one's own life,
instead of grasping it--
puts a deadness in the eyes.

The Mysteries of Life

2009-01-06T09:21:00.005-05:00

Here I am in an airless hotel room, on the hotel's ground floor. Main Street, Marion, Illinois. Night. Windy and cold, rain starting to fall. The fat waitress from dinner earlier could be overheard saying that it would freeze. I pull the curtain back and look out into the night. A car circles a bank across the street. ATM. The chipped stencil on the hotel window's glass pane reads "for your safety & protection, this window does not open." A random scroll through the television channels finds several with black screens and audio dedicated to various styles of music. I have been tuned into a 1950's Jazz channel.

And now, in the drawer of this desk, in this hotel built in the late 1990's, I find a Bible and a phone book from 1973.

Happy Birthday!

2009-01-05T08:27:00.003-05:00

Hey Nineteen!

Have a great day!

Four Thoughts On Travel

2009-01-04T11:21:00.002-05:00

"If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest--in all its ardour and paradoxes--than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival. Yet rarely are they considered to present philosophical problems--that is, issues requiring though beyond the practical. We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of questions neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modest ways contribute to an understanding of what the Greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or 'human flourishing.'" -- Alain de Botton

"One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more. Traveling makes men wiser, but less happy." -- Thomas Jefferson

"You cannot travel the path, until you have become the path." -- Siddhartha

"Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel." -- Yogi Berra

The Difficulty

2009-01-03T23:42:00.000-05:00

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way." -- Charles Bukowski

Here's Luck

2009-01-02T23:51:00.002-05:00

A little sparrow,
frozen near the woodpile;
this room so warm, now.

Renewal

2009-01-01T23:21:00.002-05:00

I gathered the webs
in that space, even as the
spiders set to work.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

2008-06-18T23:27:00.004-04:00

My wife buys me books of photographs. I use them for inspiration for whatever I might be writing at a given moment. One of them, a book of photos from Life magazine, traces great moments in human history.

And this leads me to the growing popularity of billiards in the mid-1800's. See, billiard balls were made of ivory, and the growing demand for the balls was putting an immense strain on the world's elephant population. In fact, the writing was on the wall. Soon, both elephants and billiards faced possible extinction.

So, Phelan and Collender, the country's largest maker of billiard balls, offered $10,000 to any "inventive genius" who could come up with a low-cost synthetic substitute for ivory. An American inventor named John Hyatt discovered that when he added camphor to nitrated cellulose, it made the substance less volatile. Why was this necessary? Because nitrated cellulose had a tendency to explode (now that is a game of pool). With the addition of camphor, Hyatt had come up with the cheap alternative that Phelan and Collender had been seeking.

Hyatt won the 10 grand, and then received a patent in 1869 for his product, Celluloid. It became the key ingredient in billiard balls until 1907, when Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite. But Celluloid still had a future. Turns out, it was pretty good at capturing images projected onto it.

So, you might say that we owe the multi-billion dollar plastics industry, and not-a-little of the multi-billion dollar film industry, to the billiard ball.

Really, you can't make this stuff up.

When I Met My Wife

2008-06-17T23:27:00.001-04:00

The room darkened, a
spotlight enveloped her.
A string section swelled.
She took my hand, raised her eyes,
smiled, all in slow-motion.

Happy Birthday, My Brother

2008-06-16T11:27:00.000-04:00

Blood. What more need I say?

Generations

2008-06-15T23:27:00.003-04:00

Three Views of Marriage

2008-06-14T19:00:00.001-04:00

"The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married." --Cyril Connolly

"The ideal that marriage aims at is that of spiritual union through the physical. The human love that it incarnates is intended to serve as a stepping stone to divine or universal love." --Mohandas Gandhi

"Take it from me, marriage isn't a word...It's a sentence!" --King Vidor

A Dinner At The Lobster House, Asheville, NC

2008-06-13T23:27:00.001-04:00

More vital than food,
the presence of all of us,
still here, still hungry.

Tick, Tick, Tick

2008-06-12T23:27:00.000-04:00

Query: How contrive not to waste one's time?
Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while.
--Albert Camus, The Plague

Salvador Dali

2008-06-11T23:27:00.000-04:00

Not yet who we might become.

How Easy Art Can Be

2008-06-10T08:48:00.001-04:00

Heidi hands my four-year old son
one of the little notebooks I carry.
He's crying as we wait for food.
"Here's Daddy's book," she says.
"Draw him a picture."
He sniffles, quiets, tilts his
head to one side
and goes to work.

Threads I

2008-06-09T08:37:00.000-04:00

On a bridge that spans
a slow Virginia river,
a plaque reads:
"Most Beatuiful Steel Bridge, 1978."
In between the long girders,
spiders spin webs that run
the entire bridges' length.

Happy To Be Home

2008-06-08T23:09:00.003-04:00

Days apart -- yet we're all sunburned.

Closer and Closer

2008-06-07T22:56:00.001-04:00

As the horses crossed the half-mile pole in :48, I said to the older gentleman next to me: "This is it, we are going to see a Triple Crown winner." Big Brown had survived a bump in the first turn, had gotten into the three-path, was rating behind two speed horses and the fractions looked soft.

Kent Desormeaux asked Big Brown to fire and he didn't. I was shocked to see him eased off in the stretch, and amazed to see one of those speed horses --Da'Tara-- use those same soft fractions to wire the field. Who wires the one-and-a-half mile Belmont Stakes.

Poor Big Brown. I was sorry to see him lose, even though I still won money. Yet another lesson I have learned. Don't believe it when a horse seems as though he has already been coronated by the media. Those are the races where one can really make money, since one horse is dominating the betting pools and if he finishes of the board -- Bonanza!

And yet I am a little upset. Assuming Big Brown might finish out of the money, I had narrowed my selections to the following: 3,4,6,8,9. The race came in 6-4-8-9. I was so accurate, in fact, I had to top five horses as the 3 came in fifth. Argh!!! Why did I not bet trifecta and superfecta boxes of those five!?! It would have been worth $55,000. One of these days I am going to get to call my wife and say: "Today was the day."

Today wasn't the day. But it could have been.

Graduation Day

2008-06-06T23:47:00.000-04:00

The new book, full of
blank pages, awaits your choice
of experience.
Eighteen in America --
unfettered, hopeful. Write well.

Cowboy Thought

2008-06-05T11:10:00.003-04:00

Two pards were drinking 7 & 7's
in the sports bar last night.
I overheard one say to the other,
"sometimes you got to get used
to the smell of shit."

I don't know what game they were watching.